10. Delilah
DELILAH
Nobody moves.
Fifty people and one fruit fly are as silent as the night, pun fully intended.
Then shit hits the fan.
“SHE’S LYING!” Vivian launches herself up off the loveseat, both arms extended out like she wants to strangle me from across the room. “She’s lying, everybody, she made all that shit up, that’s Photoshop, that’s fake, you can make things like that—”
“Dee.” Connor is halfway to me with his hands up in a spookily accurate mirror image of his secret lover’s. “Dee, babe, listen to me. Listen. That’s not—that’s not what that is—”
“Sit down,” Ed barks.
“Dad—”
“I said sit the fuck down, Connor.”
“Four million dollars?” That’s Uncle Johnny, on his feet by the piano. “Somebody say that number again for me. Four million?”
“It’s a misunderstanding,” Vivian pleads. “It’s a total misunderstanding, and honestly, it’s disgusting that she would—”
“You were in your sister’s bed, Vivian.” I’ve never heard Aunt Virginia sound so cold, but I suddenly remember that she was a correctional officer for a decade in the Nineties and I understand why she’s always scared me a little bit.
“We all just watched it with our own eyeballs. Do you think we’re stupid? ”
“That wasn’t me!”
“It was your hip!”
“That could be anyone’s hip! Do you know how many people get heart tattoos in this day and age?!”
Somebody knocks a chair over going for the light switch. My mother has both hands on the piano, blaring out a jarring note, and then the sound dies abruptly because she’s lurching across the carpet at me with her face gone splotchy red.
“Turn it off!” she screeches. “Delilah Aileen Dorsey, turn that horrible thing off and put the lights on and explain yourself. Right now! Now! Now!”
The screen behind me is black. There’s nothing to turn off.
“Explain yourself!” she wails again, louder and higher-pitched. “In my house…! On Christmas Eve, the first one since your father…!”
“Leanne,” Aunt Virginia interrupts. “Zip it.”
“Don’t you Leanne me!”
Two of Connor’s cousins are arguing behind the couch.
One of them says he forged her name and the other says we don’t know that and the first one says look at the paper in her hand and they keep going back and forth like that for a while.
Aunt Sherry has started to cry into a napkin, but she’s wasted and always crying for one reason or another, so I don’t take it personally.
Uncle Bub cracks the den door, peers out with a curious kid on each side of him, turns pale, and shuts it again.
I stand in the midst of the mayhem and don’t utter a peep.
This is the part of the night I did not and could not plan for.
To my surprise, it’s turning out to be far easier than I ever could’ve expected.
For thirty-one years, I have explained myself in this house. Why I was late and why I was early. Why I couldn’t work a double and then do the flowers. Why this and why that, why here and why there. Why, why, why?
Now, three of the closest people in the world to me are once again demanding answers.
I’m finding that my mouth won’t open.
I think I’m done explaining.
I set the clicker on the side table.
“Delilah,” my mother cries out over Aunt Virginia’s shoulder. “Delilah, you look at me when I’m talking to you!”
I pick up my laptop. The cable pulls loose and the screen dies.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Vivian screams at me.
She lunges in front of me. Up close, she’s shaking so hard her earrings are shivering.
“You ruined my life!”
I simply swerve around her like she doesn’t exist.
Holy fucking shit, that’s the greatest high I’ve ever felt.
For forty-eight hours now, I’ve been brimming over with this cold, hard-edged rage. I thought I wanted to ruin her for everything she’s spent her whole life doing to me.
But now that I’ve done it, it turns out this was the best revenge.
Ceasing to acknowledge her at all.
That’s the one thing she’s always gotten: the spotlight. But if I don’t give it to her… who will?
Her eyes bug out of their sockets. Screaming incoherently, she clamps down on my wrist to stop me from floating away.
I don’t pull back. I just look down at her hand on me, and then up at her. I keep looking until she takes it back.
“Say something,” she hisses. “Say something to me, you bitch.”
I don’t.
I don’t say anything to Connor, either. He calls my name—we can fix this, Dee, we can talk about this at home, you didn’t have to do it like this—as I pass by where he’s arguing with his dad, but it goes in one ear and out the other.
Then Ed grabs him by the shirt and pins him against the wall again.
Just like Vivian, he doesn’t exist to me anymore.
None of them do, really. They’re just disembodied voices drifting through me like smoke. My name again, and are you okay, my mother’s wails, my sister’s sobs.
I open the door. Cold rushes in.
“If you walk out of this house,” my mother shrieks, “you will never be allowed to come back in it!”
Well, Mother… that’s no trouble to me at all.
“Merry Christmas, everyone,” I say over my shoulder.
Then I’m gone.
I pause for a moment on the stoop. The night is tranquil. A maze of dark houses with red and white Christmas lights flashing. So many of these windows capture happy families laughing together. Not the one behind me, but that’s alright.
Maybe Dad took the happy times with him.
Or maybe the less-than-happy times were badly overdue.
I thought I’d be tired once everything was said and done, but I’m suddenly full of energy. I want to move.
So I start to walk, winding my way out toward the street.
The driveway is a disaster. People left their cars everywhere, as if the invitation said park like animals—two on the lawn, one blocking the mailbox, somebody’s Honda nose-to-nose with Uncle Johnny’s minivan.
My car is in there somewhere, but I’m not going to look for it, because I don’t want to sit down and I don’t want to drive back to a house in Sheepshead Bay that no longer feels like mine.
Matter of fact, I don’t want to be inside anything with a roof on it. I want open sky above me.
I’m going to walk. Where to? No idea. I’m just going to keep walking until there’s water in front of me and no more road, and then I’ll figure out the rest.
I make it four steps before someone stops me.
“You gave them hell.”
I stop.
He’s between two cars with his hands in his coat pockets, watching me come down the steps.
The Green-Eyed Pantry Ghost.
Except now that there’s a porch light and a streetlight and no shelving between us, I can get my first real look at him.
He’s enormous. That part I knew from the dark.
What I didn’t know is the rest of it. How well he’s dressed, in a black overcoat, black shirt unbuttoned to the chest, black and silver rings on his fingers and a black chain around his throat.
His jaw is savagely sharp, covered with dark stubble, and the black hair raked off his forehead is messily perfect, like he did it with one hand and never bothered checking the result because he already knew he looked fucking good.
But the eyes are what bring it all together.
They’re greener than green, brighter than bright. Not an ounce of dilution or shadow in them.
And they’re pointed straight at me.
“I’m glad you enjoyed the end of my life as I know it,” I answer hoarsely. “So happy to please.”
His lips quirk.
“Which part of this is funny to you?” I say, suddenly mad.
“Oh,” he sighs, “it’s so hard to choose just one.”
I scowl. “You must not have heard the ‘end of my life’ part.”
“Believe me, I heard it. I listened to every word that passed your sweet lips, sladkaya.”
My eyes roll upward of their own accord. “There you go again with the smooth lines. I’m really not in the mood.”
Inside the house, something made of glass hits the floor and a man starts yelling.
The Pantry Ghost tips his head toward the sound. “Sounded expensive.”
“I can only hope. Anyhow. Nice to meet you, but I’ve got places to be.”
I start to go past him. This time, unlike in the pantry, he’s the one who grabs my wrist.
And unlike Vivian, when I glare at him, he shows no interest in letting go.
“Where are you headed?” he asks, gazing down at me with infinite patience in his eyes.
I shrug. “I don’t know. ‘Away from here’ is the only requirement. I had a vague plan of walking to the water. Mind letting go of me so I can proceed?”
He declines to do so. His long fingers, covered in rings and tattoos, encircle my wrist easily. That single touch is enough to pin me in place.
“It’s twenty-six degrees.”
“Is it?” I say, glancing around at the snow piled up on the sidewalks. “Hadn’t noticed.”
“You have no gloves, no coat, no hat, no scarf.”
“You know,” I say, “for a man who broke into a house tonight, you have a real Mom energy about you.”
“I walked in the front door.”
“So you keep saying. I believe you less and less every time.”
The corner of his mouth goes. It’s not a fully baked smile. More like the raw dough of one.
I squint at him. I fully believe that he hasn’t lied to me tonight. But there’s something I don’t trust about him at all.
Maybe it’s just that he’s too good-looking, too obviously rich. People this easy on the eyes can’t be trusted—just look at Connor or Vivian, for example.
Pretty people are liars. Plain and simple.
“Are you a police officer?” I ask suddenly, not even sure why I care.
“No.”
“A reporter?”
“No.”
“Then you’re the third-worst thing at this party, and the other two are inside.”
“I assure you I’m worse than both,” he promises solemnly.
I shiver. “Look, if you’re out here waiting on my sister, she’s inside throwing a fit. You’ll spot her without any help from me. Men always do.”
His eyes stay locked on me, but a hot flash of rage surges through them. “I don’t want her, and I don’t want anything she’s got.”
I shiver again, this time for a different reason. It’s like he grew an extra six inches in every direction when he spoke like that, in that harsh, feral growl. Taller and broader and closer to me.
Or maybe it’s that the world seemed to shrink around him while he stayed as big as ever.
I dunno. Weird. I might be having an episode.
“I don’t think I caught your name,” I mumble through cold lips.
He arches a brow. “Are you sure you want it?”
“Should I not?” I question. “Is it a bad name? Are you, like, an Igor Igorovich or a Dick Johnson or something?”
He chuckles. “My name is Kane Makov.”
“Ah. You say that very impressively. Should I recognize it?”
He bobs a shoulder. “Some people do.”
“Well, sorry to disappoint, but it means nothing to me.”
Finally, I get a flash of dazzling white teeth as he grins. “It will. Very soon.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I am the pakhan of the Makov Bratva,” he says slowly, “and I am the man to whom your husband owes four million dollars.”
I’m not one to brag under normal circumstances, but I do feel like I’m generally a pretty smart person. I learn fast. I listen well.
But at the moment, considering that these are extremely abnormal circumstances, my brain is opting to process information at the speed of a dial-up modem with a rat chewing on the cables.
Let’s take it one chunk at a time.
Pakhan. I know maybe nine Russian words and six of them are pastries. But I’ve seen enough television to understand that it means he’s the head honcho.
I also understand that a man usually doesn’t announce himself as the head of a Bratva while clutching my wrist in his fist unless he means for me to be scared.
On to the next part: four million dollars.
When I pictured V Haven Holdings, LLC, I was imagining a beige office park in Jersey with a fern in the lobby.
Not…
Him.
A green-eyed Adonis with a whip-smart tongue and a cruel twist in his smirk.
“Are you here for him?” I whisper as the terror slithers up my throat.
He nods. “I was.”
“‘Was’? But… what changed?”
“You did,” he answers.
I shake my head to make sure I heard him right. “I don’t understand.”
“I came here tonight to ruin him,” Kane murmurs. “But you stepped in and did a much better job.”
There’s a whine and then the motor pumping the inflatable snowman next door suddenly dies. Without it, the night is even quieter than it was.
“So what happens now?” I squeak out. “You go in and get him?”
Kane shakes his head. “I’m not going in.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s nothing left of him in there.” He nods at the window. “You finished it. The man’s soul is gone. Money’s a different conversation, and it’ll happen when I choose.”
“Great.” My teeth are starting to chatter. “Then we’re done, and I’m going to go walk into the ocean. Metaphorically. Well, mostly metaphorically.”
I make it one step past him.
“Delilah.”
I stop, because he’s never said my name before, and because of what his voice does with it. To it. How it transforms my name from Do-It-All Dee into something shimmering and enchanting.
“I don’t think you’re understanding what I’m telling you,” he says. “Tonight, in front of his family, Connor Boyd stopped being any use to me at all.”
“Okay,” I say in confusion. “Uh, great. I mean, good for him. Or whatever. I don’t care.”
“But your name is on the loan.”
The wind goes right out of me.
“I… I… I…”
He takes one step in. Whiskey rushes into my nostrils, and snowmelt, and cologne, and musk, and fear, and darkness.
Suddenly, his smile doesn’t look so nice and pretty.
Not so nice at all.
“Your husband owed me a debt, sladkaya. I think I’ll take you as repayment instead.”